It is well known to use equipment racks for mounting and supporting multiple equipment modules. For example, 19-inch racks are widely used in modern data centers, ISP facilities and corporate server rooms for mounting and supporting various equipment modules, including computing, telecommunication, audio, and/or video equipment.
Currently available cable management arms (CMAs) are mounted on the rear of equipment racks and connected to the rear of the equipment modules accessible from the “hot aisle”. In particular, cables are managed by a conventional CMA as a chassis supporting an equipment module is pulled out from the equipment rack in a drawer-like manner for servicing the equipment module from the “cold aisle”. As the chassis is pulled out, the space in the back side of the chassis is cleared for the CMA to follow with the chassis movement. Such conventional CMAs are designed for the currently used rack mount servers and storage enclosures that are all designed with I/O cables on rear of the chassis. An example of such a conventional CMA is described in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0100933 A1 entitled “Reversible Cable Management Arm”.
Recent efforts have been made to arrange I/O cables on the front of equipment racks for ready access from the “cold aisle”. For example, the Open Compute Project (OCP) initiated by Facebook calls for an OCP rack that has the same outside dimensions as a conventional 19-inch rack (e.g., 600 mm width), but allows for wider equipment modules. The OCP rack design requires that the I/O cables be arranged on the front of the equipment rack. Unfortunately, conventional CMAs mounted on the front of the rack will block the chassis travel path as it and the equipment module supported thereon are pulled out for service. Also, power buttons, status displays and other items are generally located on the front of an equipment module for simple access by service personnel for service needs from the “cold aisle”. Again, conventional CMAs mounted on the front of the rack may block access to the power buttons, status displays and other items, needlessly requiring the service personnel to manually manage the CMAs or cables supported thereon for various service needs.
This is not just the problem for the chassis used in OCP racks; it is well known issue for the most commonly designed blade servers from HP, Dell, and Cisco. Such blade servers have the I/O cable arranged on front and are thus not suited for front cable management using conventional CMAs. Instead, cables are left to dangle and hang on the front of the chassis, and service personnel generally has to disconnect the cables from the chassis (and equipment modules supported thereon) in order to pull the chassis out. Unfortunately, such disconnection will disconnect the data transfer and is not allowed for most applications.
Longer cables dangling on front of the chassis maybe used in order to avoid disconnecting data traffic. In this case, service personnel must manually manage the longer dangling cables while moving the chassis out. These dangled, unmanaged cables block the front of other chassis/modules mounted below the subject chassis, and thus eliminate or reduce the visibility of the status indicators and/or the airflow path of the lower chassis/modules. In some cases, the blockage of air vents could be fatal for the cooling systems of the lower chassis/modules.
In light of the foregoing, it would be beneficial to have systems and apparatuses which overcome the above and other disadvantages of currently available CMAs.